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You clearly don't understand the phrase "mandated behavior", as in, you are ordered to perform certain actions, regardless of what you want.

A mandated behavior is something like forcing citizens to stand at attention and salute the Fuhrer every morning at 7 AM. Even if you just got off the night shift at 6:45 and can't bear to stand up for another moment, you'll go to jail if you don't stand and salute.

A non-mandated-behavior rule is something like declaring that driving in the left lane is approved for all northbound traffic. You are still free to go North, if you desire, but you will do so in the prescribed manner.

Yet in your sad, uneducated world-view, mandated and non-mandated behavioral rules are both equal, as in equally non-free.

Sigh. You just don't get the difference.

Sigh. You just don't get the difference.

Sadly, you are correct. I am aware of too many instances where "non-mandated-behavior" imposed real restraints and caused real harm. Like the thousands upon thousands of people who have died while the FDA took twice as long to approve drugs than it took for equivalent European agencies to approve the same drugs.

My "sad, uneducated world-view" includes too much personal experience in Latin America, where there is very little of your "mandated-behavior"--they do not have the resources to enforce such things--but quite a lot of your "non-mandated-behavior". "Non-mandated-behavior" laws are piled up on top of more "non-mandated-behavior" laws to the point that citzens of these countries have very little real freedom. True, not much is outright forbidden and even less is positively mandated, but the end effect is not one whit different.

The same thing is happening here in the US and shows little signs of abating. Manufacturing has not left the US because manufacturers are evil, money grubbing, unpatriotic scum bags. We have simply piled "non-mandated-behavior" regulations to the sky, driving manufacturers out of the country.

But you, in the meantime, may feel content to "live like a king" in Alabama. Perhaps some day in the future, when the burden of "non-mandated-behavior" regulations has become so heavy that IBM, BellSouth, and Computer Sciences Corporation are no longer hiring programmers, DBA's, tech writers, and software project managers we will have a common cause.

I look forward to fighting the good fight along side you when that day comes. Until then, goodbye.

[z]